BERLIN | Interview with Poject Space Kinderhook & Caracas

I was introduced to Kinderhook & Caracas quite early into my move to Berlin. At the opening of Jesse Garcia’s ‘Trial & Error, the small room spilled over with an assortment of international patrons just as glasses overflowed with Aperol Spritz. The owners, Sol Calero and Christopher Kline—who named the space for their respective home towns—had opened up the back wall to reveal their attached studio apartment and welcomed guests with a warm familiarity and charm that I thought only loving grandmothers possessed.

Through both the project space and their independent practices, the husband and wife duo are influential participants in Berlin’s art scene. Kline, whose work ranges from painting, textiles, and publishing, has also made a name for himself through his alter-ego’d music performances, particularly as the so-called “R&B dance hit machine,ˮ Hush Hush. Calero, who exudes a certain Latin-American joie de vivre through her colourful, politically charged art-spaces, has recently shown at galleries and fairs such as Frutta Gallery, Gillmeier Rech, and Frieze London.

I returned to their apartment to find them, with no surprise, in the midst of yet another project; papers sorted and splayed all over the dining room floor. We sipped coffee and discussed the development of K&C and all things Berlin.

Interview by Erin Reznick

Erin How did you end up in Berlin?

Christopher Kline I guess I had a weird idea of what Berlin was. I thought it was going to be darker. I had this idea of Berlin in the ʼ80s; of like, Nick Cave playing and everyone is grey and depressed and listening to industrial music or something. I ran into a friend who had just left Berlin and he said, “You have to go, youʼd be the most industrious person there. Everyone just sleeps and parties.” So then I came and just stayed.

Sol Calero For me it was a bit different – less romantic and more practical. I was living in Madrid doing my masterʼs. When I finished studying I applied for a grant to work for an artist here. I chose Berlin because the art scene was very different than in Spain. Spain is another world.

I thought it was going to be harder for me to develop my work in Madrid because there just wasn’t much going on. It was also the beginning of the Spanish recession, so it was the right moment to leave.

Erin When did you open the project space?

CK We opened three years ago in September 2011. We were making booklets with other artists that weren’t very curated but that got us into working with other people. Whenever we were working on our own projects, we tried to do something else that was more collaborative. Our friends lived in this space before us but ended up moving to the US. I don’t know that we would have started a space if we didn’t see this clear opportunity.

SC It was a mix of wanting to do something but not knowing what. We had an idea of wanting to build something together and we got so lucky because we needed to move and our friends had this space. Our initial idea was to start a press, but it ended up a project space.

Erin How does the city influence you practice?

SC My art practice has completely changed since I moved to the city. Being surrounded by so many artists and seeing many different parts of the art world teaches you a lot. It influences my understanding of art.

CK In Berlin you have so much input and you have to filter it. You can meet one Italian artist, and suddenly from there you meet 10 Italian artists who have their own thing going on. Then you can meet a group of people who went to a particular school or a group of people from New York who have their own scene. It’s up to you to filter what’s good and bad, how you can learn from these scenes and who your work can speak to.

SC There are many options. It’s harder in other cities because the gallery world can be so segregated. It’s less hierarchical here.

CK In Paris I get the impression that [the gallery world] is very hard to break into. In Berlin you can bump into quite a famous gallerist at any shitty party. Or you can meet a good curator at Berghain or something.

Erin In recent years there has been an enormous infiltration of international artists. Has this changed Berlin’s art scene and market?

CK I came to Berlin when people were trickling in. In the past three years or so, it seems as if floods of groups of people have been coming in. When I moved here, there were actually quite a lot of Canadians from the Vancouver core, but I didn’t have a group, I only had one friend. We didn’t dominate a scene. Now you can see fifteen friends from New York move here and start a little colony. You definitely see certain changes in the streets and neighbourhoods.

SC You see it more in this city because it’s a new city. It started growing from the ʼ80s – the changes are quite visible. In Madrid, the urban planning is so different, you don’t have the opportunity to see it develop. You don’t notice it. Here there is more space.

CK Berlin is a city that has been changing for over 100 years. There was the First World War, then there was the Second World War, then the wall went up, then there was the Cold War, then the wall came down and it’s just going to continue to develop like that. There are little vacuums of history with negatives and positives to every step. I don’t like how people are complaining that the city isn’t the way it used to be. When I moved here eight years ago, everyone said ‘Berlin is over. It’s OVER.’ No, not really. It’s a real place where people live and have real lives.

Erin Are there any local galleries that are exciting you at the moment?

CK I think that the galleries I like are all hit or miss. They all have shows that I like and shows that I don’t like. The more exciting thing right now are the artist-run spaces or curator-run spaces.

SC Like ours. [laughs]

CK These can also be hit or miss but the intentions are very different. I don’t like to see young artists clamoring on top of each other to be represented by a gallery which is actually just a name with a reputation. Galleries have bad business models. They take risks no other businesses would and we see them fail after about five years. If artists are more in control of their own shows and production, it’s a more sustainable model. It’s great to work with galleries if you can, but you shouldn’t change your work to do so. I see a lot of people trying to fit in.

SC I agree. I like a lot of galleries in Berlin – some of them have more cohesive programs than others but it’s really more about the artists. By running a project space, we don’t have that commercial exchange. The relationship that we establish with the artists and the audience is very different and it’s more exciting.

Erin Both of your previous work, but particularly Sol’s, involves transforming existing spaces. Is this because you want to depart from the White Cube gallery norm?

SC I want to activate the space. My projects in the past year and a half have dealt with social spaces for immigrants and I’ve wanted to transmit that into the gallery. It’s also about being inclusive in my projects and integrating other people in my art practice. For me, the easiest way to do that was to turn the gallery into a social space where anything can happen. I can have installations where I paint the furniture or have a concert and other artists can be part of the project. It becomes a space for exchanging ideas or sharing a moment. For example, I invited Venezuelan artists to be a part of my Internet Café [installation] for Frieze. When you involve other artists, the creative process becomes so much richer because it’s more about the idea and not just about you.

CK We are pretty playful and easy going but we take this so seriously that if we’re going to work on a project then we’re going to go all the way. We spend all of our money, we use all of our energy, and honestly almost lose our minds every single time. I think that the aesthetic of using the entire space also comes from this idea of working as hard as we can to take our vision all of the way.

Erin Your work, both singularly and collaboratively, touches on notions of hometown culture and the identities, relationships and representations that they encompass. What motivates this exploration?

CK The places that you come from shapes the lens that see the world. The longer you’re away you start to realize how not only your lens is different, but you begin to notice the eccentricities of that place.

In regards to Kinderhook & Caracas, we didn’t want a name that was in English, we wanted something international. It doesn’t change depending on the language. That’s why we don’t write it as Kinderhook and Caracas. It can be Kinderhook und Caracas or Kinderhook and Caracas because we included an ampersand.

Erin All obstacles aside, how would you like to see Kinderhook & Caracas develop?

SC We would like to open a residency in the Canary Islands. Our dream is to keep developing this space more into a practice. It’s not just showing exhibitions by artists.

CKIt would be great to show a project by a scientist or a project by a weaver. The Canary Islands is the clearest choice for us because [Sol’s] family lives there and we love it there. Everyone here wants to go there and everyone there wants to come here. So we need to start building an exchange between people and ideas and artwork.

SC Oh yes, we have bigger goals! We want to buy this beautiful farmhouse next to the beach and build it Kinderhook & Caracas into something that is more of an institution.